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10 ways to wealth by Warren Buffett

1. Reinvest Your Profits: When you first make money, you may be tempted to spend it. Don't. Instead, reinvest the profits. Warren Buffett learned this early on. In high school, he and a pal bought a pinball machine to pun in a barbershop. With the money they earned, they bought more machines until they had eight in different shops. When the friends sold the venture, Warren Buffett used the proceeds to buy stocks and to start another small business. By age 26, he'd amassed $174,000 -- or $1.4 million in today's money. Even a small sum can turn into great wealth.

2. Be Willing To Be Different: Don't base your decisions upon what everyone is saying or doing. When Warren Buffett began managing money in 1956 with $100,000 cobbled together from a handful of investors, he was dubbed an oddball. He worked in Omaha, not Wall Street, and he refused to tell his parents where he was putting their money. People predicted that he'd fail, but when he closed his partnership 14 years later, it was worth more than $100 million. Instead of following the crowd, he looked for undervalued investments and ended up vastly beating the market average every single year. To Warren Buffett, the average is just that -- what everybody else is doing. to be above average, you need to measure yourself by what he calls the Inner Scorecard, judging yourself by your own standards and not the world's.

3. Never Suck Your Thumb: Gather in advance any information you need to make a decision, and ask a friend or relative to make sure that you stick to a deadline. Warren Buffett prides himself on swiftly making up his mind and acting on it. He calls any unnecessary sitting and thinking "thumb sucking." When people offer him a business or an investment, he says, "I won't talk unless they bring me a price." He gives them an answer on the spot.

4. Spell Out The Deal Before You Start: Your bargaining leverage is always greatest before you begin a job -- that's when you have something to offer that the other party wants. Warren Buffett learned this lesson the hard way as a kid, when his grandfather Ernest hired him and a friend to dig out the family grocery store after a blizzard. The boys spent five hours shoveling until they could barely straighten their frozen hands. Afterward, his grandfather gave the pair less than 90 cents to split. Warren Buffett was horrified that he performed such backbreaking work only to earn pennies an hour. Always nail down the specifics of a deal in advance -- even with your friends and relatives.

5. Watch Small Expenses: Warren Buffett invests in businesses run by managers who obsess over the tiniest costs. He one acquired a company whose owner counted the sheets in rolls of 500-sheet toilet paper to see if he was being cheated (he was). He also admired a friend who painted only on the side of his office building that faced the road. Exercising vigilance over every expense can make your profits -- and your paycheck -- go much further.

6. Limit What You Borrow: Living on credit cards and loans won't make you rich. Warren Buffett has never borrowed a significant amount -- not to invest, not for a mortgage. He has gotten many heart-rendering letters from people who thought their borrowing was manageable but became overwhelmed by debt. His advice: Negotiate with creditors to pay what you can. Then, when you're debt-free, work on saving some money that you can use to invest.

7. Be Persistent: With tenacity and ingenuity, you can win against a more established competitor. Warren Buffett acquired the Nebraska Furniture Mart in 1983 because he liked the way its founder, Rose Blumkin, did business. A Russian immigrant, she built the mart from a pawnshop into the largest furniture store in North America. Her strategy was to undersell the big shots, and she was a merciless negotiator. To Warren Buffett, Rose embodied the unwavering courage that makes a winner out of an underdog.

8. Know When To Quit: Once, when Warren Buffett was a teen, he went to the racetrack. He bet on a race and lost. To recoup his funds, he bet on another race. He lost again, leaving him with close to nothing. He felt sick -- he had squandered nearly a week's earnings. Warren Buffett never repeated that mistake. Know when to walk away from a loss, and don't let anxiety fool you into trying again.

9. Assess The Risk: In 1995, the employer of Warren Buffett's son, Howie, was accused by the FBI of price-fixing. Warren Buffett advised Howie to imagine the worst-and-bast-case scenarios if he stayed with the company. His son quickly realized that the risks of staying far outweighed any potential gains, and he quit the next day. Asking yourself "and then what?" can help you see all of the possible consequences when you're struggling to make a decision -- and can guide you to the smartest choice.

10. Know What Success Really Means: Despite his wealth, Warren Buffett does not measure success by dollars. In 2006, he pledged to give away almost his entire fortune to charities, primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He's adamant about not funding monuments to himself -- no Warren Buffett buildings or halls. "I know people who have a lot of money," he says, "and they get testimonial dinners and hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. When you get to my age, you'll measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. That's the ultimate test of how you've lived your life."

[SOURCE: http://www.warrenbuffett.com/warren-buffett-10-ways-to-get-rich/]

Warren Buffett’s hires New Investor

Warren Buffett today announced that Todd Combs, a 39-year old investment manager of Castle Point Capital, has joined Berkshire Hathaway to help manage the company’s investment portfolio.

“For three years, Charlie Munger and I have been looking for someone of Todd’s caliber to handle a significant portion of Berkshire’s investment portfolio. We are delighted that Todd will be joining us.”

Todd Combs owns the following companies in his financially-focused fund; U.S. Bancorp, MasterCard Inc, State Street Corp, The Western Union Company and CME Group Inc. His portfolio is concentrated in financials with more than 70% invested.

I trust in Warren Buffett’s choice, so it will be interesting to see what this young new executive can do.

Investing Like Warren Buffett | Part 4

Part 4 of our Investing Like Warren Buffett series discusses Berkshire Hathaway’s 1980 Chairman’s letter to shareholders. As always, I will focus on the important points highlighted in this material. Enjoy!!

Click here for 1980 Chairman’s Letter to Shareholders

Warren Buffett on non-controlled ownership earnings;


Non-Controlled Ownership Earnings

When one company owns part of another company, appropriate accounting procedures pertaining to that ownership interest must be selected from one of three major categories. The percentage of voting stock that is owned, in large part, determines which category of accounting principles should be utilized.

Generally accepted accounting principles require (subject to exceptions, naturally, as with our former bank subsidiary) full consolidation of sales, expenses, taxes, and earnings of business holdings more than 50% owned. Blue Chip Stamps, 60% owned by Berkshire Hathaway Inc., falls into this category. Therefore, all Blue Chip income and expense items are included in full in Berkshire’s Consolidated Statement of Earnings, with the 40% ownership interest of others in Blue Chip’s net earnings reflected in the Statement as a deduction for “minority interest”.



Full inclusion of underlying earnings from another class of holdings, companies owned 20% to 50% (usually called “investees”), also normally occurs. Earnings from such companies - for example, Wesco Financial, controlled by Berkshire but only 48% owned - are included via a one-line entry in the owner’s Statement of Earnings. Unlike the over-50% category, all items of revenue and expense are omitted; just the proportional share of net income is included. Thus, if Corporation A owns one-third of Corporation B, one-third of B’s earnings, whether or not distributed by B, will end up in A’s earnings. There are some modifications, both in this and the over-50% category, for intercorporate taxes and purchase price adjustments, the explanation of which we will save for a later day. (We know you can hardly wait.)



Finally come holdings representing less than 20% ownership of another corporation’s voting securities. In these cases, accounting rules dictate that the owning companies include in their earnings only dividends received from such holdings. Undistributed earnings are ignored. Thus, should we own 10% of Corporation X with earnings of $10 million in 1980, we would report in our earnings (ignoring relatively minor taxes on intercorporate dividends) either (a) $1 million if X declared the full $10 million in dividends; (b) $500,000 if X paid out 50%, or $5 million, in dividends; or (c) zero if X reinvested all earnings.


Warren Buffett on great investments;


“For capital to be truly indexed, return on equity must rise”. Business earnings consistently must increase in proportion to the increase in the price level without any need for the business to add to capital – including working capital – employed. (Increased earnings produced by increased investment don’t count.) Only a few businesses come close to exhibiting this ability. Berkshire Hathaway isn’t one of them.


Warren Buffett on turnarounds;


“When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”


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Bruce Berkowitz's HUGE Bet On Financials | Interview On WealthTrack

Anyone who is an avid student of Warren Buffett should pay attention to Bruce Berkowitz, founder of Fairholme Fund. The philosophy of this fund is to "Ignore the Crowd", therefore his investment decisions are usually contrarian in nature and he tends to go to where investors are scared to go or running from. This sounds just like Buffett's famous quote "Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful where others are greedy". Great interview by Consuelo Mack on his current portfolio positions.

What do you think of Berkowitz’s HUGE bet on financials?
Leave your comments here.


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